A Short History of the World

Wells took his vast Outline of History and cut it down to something a reader could finish in a week, and the compression did it good. In short, brisk chapters he runs from the cooling of the planet through the first fish and reptiles, the earliest cities, Babylon and Egypt, Greece and Rome, the rise of Christianity and Islam, the Renaissance, the revolutions, and on to the League of Nations. Each chapter is a sketch rather than a scholarly survey, and Wells never pretends otherwise; the point is momentum and proportion, the shape of the whole story at a glance. Albert Einstein recommended it to anyone who wanted a sense of where civilization had been and where it might be going. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.